Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (April 7, 1952) is a Pakistani philosopher, educationist, and a scholar of Islam.

He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation Danish Sara.

Javed Ahmed Ghamidi was born as Muhammad Shafique (later he renamed himself as Javed Ghamidi) on 18 April 1952 to a Kakazai family in a village called Jiwan Shah, Arifwala in (District Pakpattan), Punjab, Pakistan.

His family village settlement was Dawud in Sialkot.

After matriculating, he came to Lahore in 1967 where he is settled ever since.

Initially, he was more interested in Literature and Philosophy.

He later graduated from Government College, Lahore, with a BA Honours in English Literature & Philosophy in 1972.

Ghamidi encountered the works of Hamiduddin Farahi, a scholar of the Quran by chance in a library.

Finding mention of Amin Ahsan Islahi (who advanced Farahi's thought) in this work inspired Ghamidi to meet Islahi who resided in Lahore during that time.

This encounter would change Ghamidi's focus from philosophy and literature, to religion.

In 1973, he came under the tutelage of Amin Ahsan Islahi (d. 1997), who was destined to who have a deep impact on him.

He also taught Islamic studies at the Civil Services Academy for more than a decade from 1979 to 1991.

He was also a student of Islamic scholar and exegete, Amin Ahsan Islahi.

He is running an intellectual movement similar to Wasatiyyah, on the popular electronic media of Pakistan.

Currently he is Principal Research Fellow and Chief Patron of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning in United States.

He was also associated with scholar and revivalist Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi (d. 1979) for several years.

He started working with them on various Islamic disciplines particularly exegesis and Islamic law.

In his book, Maqamat (مقامات), Ghamidi starts with an essay "My Name" (میرا نام) to describe the story behind his surname, which sounds somewhat alien in the context of the Indian Subcontinent.

He describes a desire during his childhood years to establish a name linkage to his late grandfather Noor Elahi, after learning of his status as the one people of the area turned to, to resolve disputes.

This reputation also led to his (grandfather's) reputation as a peacemaker (مصلح).

Subsequently, one of the visiting Sufi friends of his father narrated a story of the patriarch of the Arab tribe Banu Ghamid who earned the reputation of being a great peacemaker.

He writes, that the temporal closeness of these two events clicked in his mind and he decided to add the name Ghamidi to his given name, Javed Ahmed.

Taxila.

Ghamidi's conclusions and understanding of Islam, including the Sharia, has been presented concisely in his book Mizan with the intention of presenting the religion in its pure shape, cleansed from tasawwuf, qalam, fiqh, all philosophies and any other contaminants.

In his arguments, there is no reference to the Western sources, human rights or current philosophies of crime and punishment.

Nonetheless, employing the traditional Islamic framework, he reaches conclusions which are similar to those of Islamic modernists and progressives on the subject.

The only valid basis for jihad through arms is to end oppression when all other measures have failed.

According to him Jihad can only be waged by an organised Islamic state, that too only where a leader has been nominated by the previous leader or by the consensus of the ulema if the state is newly established.

No person, party or group can take arms into their hands (for the purpose of waging Jihad) under any circumstances.

Another corollary, in his opinion, is that death punishment for apostasy was also specifically for the recipients of the same Divine punishment during Muhammad's times—for they had persistently denied the truth of Muhammad's mission even after it had been made conclusively evident to them by God through Muhammad.

According to Ghamidi, the formation of an Islamic state is not a religious obligation upon the Muslims per se.

However, if and when Muslims do happen to form a state of their own, Islam does impose certain religious obligations on its rulers as establishment of the institutions of salat (obligatory prayer), zakah (mandatory charity), and 'amr bi'l-ma'ruf wa nahi 'ani'l-munkar (preservation and promotion of society's good conventions and customs and eradication of social vices); this, in Ghamidi's opinion, should be done in modern times through courts, police, etc. in accordance with the law of the land which, as the government itself, must be based on the opinion of the majority.

Ghamidi argues that the Qur'an states norms for male-female interaction in Surah An-Nur, while in Surah Al-Ahzab, there are special directives for Muhammad's wives and directives given to Muslim women to distinguish themselves when they were being harassed in Medina.

He further claims that the Qur'an has created a distinction between men and women only to maintain family relationships.

His father, Muhammad Tufayl Junaydi, was a landowner, involved in medicine and a committed follower of tasawwuf until his death in 1986.

Ghamidi and his two elder sisters grew up in a Sufi household.

His early education included a modern path (matriculating from Islamia High School, Pakpattan), as well as a traditional path (Arabic and Persian languages, and the Qur'an with Nur Ahmad of Nang Pal).

His first exposure to traditional Islamic studies was in the Sufi tradition.

He became a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistani Government and the country's Parliament) on 28 January 2006, where he remained for a couple of years.

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi was named in The Muslim 500 (The World's Most Influential Muslims) in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions.